“Welcome every morning with a smile. Look on the new day as another special gift from your creator, another golden opportunity to complete what you were unable to finish yesterday. Be a self-starter. Let your first hour set the theme of success and positive action that is certain to echo through your entire day. Today will never happen again. Don’t waste it with a false start or no start at all. You were not born to fail.” ~by Og Mandino

Friday, November 13, 2009

I have the flat tyre tonight!

Oh my god. Oh my god. OH-MY-GOD!!!

For God’s sake, this happens to me tonight. Before this, I had never thought that it would occur to me. At least I did not have any flat tyre for the past three years. There now. I meet this. Shit. I completely have no idea how to settle it. Everything that I learnt in my driving school has all been dumped away ages ago. I can’t recall any single bit in my mind of how to fix this condition. I’m stuck. I hate this feeling. I would get crazy.

Calm down. Calm down. I try to console myself for not being so desperate. What I should have to do now is, go and find somebody to help me. Oh, no no. This is indeed a good chance for me to learn how to fix the flat tyre, the great chance to re-pick up the skill again. I know fixing the flat tyre would sound easy to somebody, especially the guys. But I’m a delicate lady, plus I have never done this before. Well, it’s certainly a great challenge to me, perhaps even more difficult than being a tutor.

Ok. I take a deep breath and go to ask Shahrul (my colleague, Test Engineer too) about the way to fix the flat tyre. He feels really shock after getting to know that I want to fix the thing myself. He even offers his help to settle the whole thing for me but I politely decline. I tell him that I’m seriously wanted to do it on my own. So, finally he tells me everything and I try hard to note down every detail in my mind.

When the bell rings, I quickly take my car keys and rush out from the factory. Shahrul stops me in my half way to the exit. He wants to come with me and gives me a hand when I really need any help later. Ok, fine. At least, there will be somebody there to correct me if I do it wrong.

It’s a raining day. I drive my car to the shielded area and pull up the break, take the tools bag out from the trunk. I zip open the bag and look inside. What the hell are them? I don’t know any of them except the jack. Christ. Whatever. Just take them out first and figure out what to do later.

I unlock the spare tyre located underneath the floor mat in the trunk and pull it out. It’s bloody heavy. Shahrul asks me to put that spare tyre underneath the fringe of the car, somewhere near to the flat tyre, just in case the jack accidentally malfunctions in the midway of work and the spare type could support the weight of the car. Ok, fine. Let’s get on to the next. The silver hubcap is removed and the four lug nuts are exposed. Shahrul hands me a tool and tells me that is lug wrench, for loosen the nuts (not remove them yet). Ok, I will do that.

This is honestly beyond my ability. I think I have overestimated myself for trying to loosen the nuts. I step on the lug wrench and slightly jump on the tool. This is the way to loosen the nut if you think you can’t just do it by hands.

May be I’m not strong enough for that as it doesn’t work at all; no matter how I jump and push and anything that I can do. It still remains the same, never move a single bit. I’m pissed off. Eventually, I leave this part to Shahrul. May be this is really the man’s job.

After that, I put the jack under the car frame, near to the flat tyre and start pumping the jack until the flat tyre lift off the ground. It is time to return home and therefore, there are many people passing by and some of them even stop for a little while to see what we are doing there. Poron, BK Wong and Kumar are very kind to me. They all are actually on the way to get their cars and go home. But, they stop and offer to help me. Poron shows me the alternative way to raise the jack up, Kumar tells me that the nuts should be tightened in a cross pattern, BK Wong is monitoring the whole process and giving some ideas when needed (he is like a commander, haa). Oh, how kind of you all!

Jack up the car, remove the nuts and then the flat tyre, install the spare one and follow by all the nuts back to the wheel, and finally jack down the car. All in all, I can't quite belieave that I'm getting away with it, after an hour of struggling. Phew~ I’m indeed exhausted at the end.

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